Bilingual election dificiencies addressed

Published 6:00 pm, Thursday, January 7, 2010

After some complaints three years ago, Hale County has improved its bilingual voting practices over the last few years, a recent federal report stated.

The federal government in February 2006 filed a complaint against Hale County alleging it did not provide enough bilingual poll workers trained to assist Spanish-speaking voters and failed to effectively publicize election information in Spanish.

"There were some complaints about the amount of material that was translated into Spanish, like directional signs, and also the quality of the translation from English into Spanish," said Hale County Attorney Jim Tirey. "This wasn’t anything malicious to keep Hispanics from voting."

Also, he said, there were some misunderstandings that people other than poll workers were allowed to help translate when asked.

In April 2006, Hale County entered into an agreement called a consent decree that allowed the U.S. Justice Department to monitor future elections in Hale County and required the county to increase the number of bilingual poll workers, employ a bilingual coordinator and establish a bilingual advisory group.

Hale County has met all those requirements, and the consent decree expired at the end of 2009, the report stated.

"Really from the first election (after the consent decree), everything was taken care of. We didn’t have any complaints after that," Tirey said. "We don’t have the justice department looking over what we’re doing (anymore)."

Tirey produced a handout for poll workers that highlights the requirements.

"Basically, it says to treat everyone the same," he said.

Hale County also hired a bilingual elections coordinator, Richard Castillo, who under the consent degree was required to find qualified bilingual poll workers.

That hasn’t been much of a problem, Castillo said, who has been elections coordinator for about a year and four months.

"We’ve gotten a lot more people to volunteer working as assistants or just poll workers," Castillo said.

But, he said, he could always use more. Anyone interested in volunteering should contact the Hale County clerk’s office.

Castillo and his workers build the ballot in both Spanish and English and then record an audio version of the ballot in both languages. Some of the Spanish words located in the amendments can be difficult to record, Castillo said.

"I’d get tongue tied and have to do it again," he said.

Hale County is also developing a Web site, Tirey said. Election information on the Web site will be posted in both English and Spanish.

According to the 2000 Census, Hale County had a total population of 36,602 persons, of whom 47.9 percent were Hispanic. The total citizen voting-age population was 25,532, of whom 41.8 percent were Hispanic. The number of Hispanic voting-age citizens who were limited English proficient was 2,625.